CHICAGO — It’s a play that snaps losing streaks. It’s a play that helps you beat one of the best pitchers in baseball. It’s a play that Shawn O’Malley has shown a knack for making this season. And it may have saved the Mariners from more late-inning disaster against the White Sox.
So much had to go right for the Mariners in their 3-1 win over the White Sox and Chris Sale on Friday night at U.S. Cellular Field.
They needed to scratch out runs against the perennial All-Star and Cy Young Award candidate, which isn’t easy to do when you have three left-handers in your starting lineup.
Seattle also needed a strong outing from its ace Felix Hernandez, knowing that run support would be at a minimum and with a six-man bullpen that was already overused on Thursday night.
And plays needed to be made. Plays that weren’t made Thursday night in a loss. O’Malley made the play of the night in the eighth inning with the Mariners teetering on the edge of failure.
With the bases loaded and one out, closer Edwin Diaz was called on to pitch in the highest leverage situation with Seattle clinging to a 3-1 lead. O’Malley, playing in place of the injured Kyle Seager at third base, made a brilliant barehand pickup on Tim Anderson’s soft ground ball, firing home to Mike Zunino to get the runner with the force-out. Diaz then got Jose Abreu to pop out in foul territory to O’Malley to end the inning.
Diaz worked a dominant 1-2-3 ninth to pick up the save.
Hitless in his previous 15 at-bats and really showing little sign of returning to the productive presence he was last season, Franklin Gutierrez tantalized fans and his teammates with possibility again. He was ready for Sale’s 1-1 fastball clocked at 97 mph and drove it over the wall in right-center for his 12th homer of the season. The solo blast gave Seattle a 1-0 lead.
It was the first extra-base hit that Sale had allowed in 142/3 innings and the first homer he had given up since the eighth inning of his start on Aug. 3 — a span more than 23 innings and his second homer in his previous 43 innings.
One run was an accomplishment off Sale, but two more? Yep, that happened, too.
The Mariners pushed a run across in the third inning, loading the bases on a hit by pitch, a single from Ketel Marte and a bunt single from Leonys Martin. With bases loaded and no outs, Guillermo Heredia hit into a 6-4-3 double play that scored the run. It wasn’t an ideal result, but a rare run nonetheless.
An inning later, Nelson Cruz led off with a single, advanced to second on Zunino’s deep fly to center and scored on Adam Lind’s line-drive double into the left-center gap to make it 3-0. It was just the seventh extra-base hit that Sale had surrendered to a left-handed hitter this season.
It was good the Mariners got their runs when they did. An agitated Sale carved up Seattle after the Lind double, retiring 16 straight hitters with 10 of them coming on strikeouts, including six in a row at one point. He finished the five-hitter with 14 strikeouts.
